Posted in: Movies | Tagged: alien 5, alien: covenant, film, neill blomkamp, ridley scott

R.I.P. Neill Blomkamp's 'Alien 5', According To Ridley Scott

There are some things that are never meant to be and Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 is apparently one of those things. The internet went completely insane in 2015 at the idea of someone like Blompkamp directing an Alien movie and it got even louder when Sigourney Weaver at San Diego Comic-Con 2016 made comments about the script. She told the story of chatting with Blompkamp on the set of Chappie.

"[Neill and I] started chatting about how the series left Ripley," Weaver said. "I had not wanted to do a fifth one. I just didn't want [the film to take place on] Earth—I thought going to Earth was a little boring. We started just talking about it, and four months later, I got a script that was so amazing, and gives the fans everything they're looking for. [And it] innovates, in a lot of ways. He has work to do, I have work to do, and I'm hoping when we finish those jobs, we'll circle back and start to do it."

These comments made it sound like there was a script, or at least a mostly complete script, but Ridley Scott is telling a very different story now. Scott seems keen to stick with the series for now and has ideas for other movies leading all the way up to Alien 1.

"I went back with the idea for Prometheus, which is the long way around, because it would be a prequel and then the next would be [Alien:] Covenant which would be the sequel to the prequel," Scott said to Entertainment Weekly. "And then, after that, unless we run out of steam we'll then come back in to the rear-end of Alien 1. You'll know full well by that point who the affectionately termed 'Space Jockey' is."

Where does that leave Alien 5? According to a translation of a French interview on AVP Galaxy the project is as good as dead.

"I think [Blomkamp's film] will never see the light… There was never a scenario, just an idea that evolved into a pitch of ten pages. I had to participate as a producer but it did not go any further because [20th Century] Fox decided that [they] did not want to do it. I had already done Prometheus and worked on Covenant."

If Scott is working his way up to the beginning of the series there really isn't any reason Blomkamp can't take over for the latter parts. At the moment things aren't looking too good for Alien fans hoping to see Ripley and Hicks back on screen.

Alien: Covenant will be released on May 19, 2017.

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